New meta-analysis checks the correlation between intelligence and faith

Science is not the be all end all of our existence. Science can not tell us the meaning of life, or what truth is and where it comes from and most of all what Love is. Atheist like to say if something can not scientifically proven it must be and be thrown to the scrap heap. Someone please tell me, when was the theory of evolution proven to be fact? Where is the repeatable experiment proving life can all of a sudden exist out of some sludge in a pond? Make no mistake, Atheist life by faith just as much as theist do. It is by faith and faith alone that you don't believe in God. It is by faith you think we came from some cosmic big bang and the conditions were ridiculously just right to form life. I am a Christian, there is so much evidence for Christ one just has to read. Faith is a major part of all life, God designed it that way. By the way, the Christian life is not for the weak of mind or heart. It is VERY difficult to love your enemies and to put God and others before yourself.

That the basis for your rejection of a claim is that it is "untestable" belies your insistence that you are not a strict philosophical empiricist. There are plenty of claims that don't lend themselves to empirical analysis (historical events for example) and yet it is not unreasonable to ascribe truthfulness to them based on other methods of analysis.

You are using a silly definition of test. I can test historical claims by comparing them to available evidence. This evidence is often murky though. I'm not a big fan of history because it is highly subjective. There are historical events for which we have physical evidence, and there are wildly differing interpretations of the evidence available.

I'm not sure why you think historical claims aren't testable. Certainly some historical claims are not testable, and I favor rejection of those claims. Any given history book will have a narrative to go along with its evidence, and I take the narrative with a grain of salt.

Quote:

vishnu wrote:

I make no claims that what I investigate empirically is the fundamental truth of the universe.

And yet you will a priori reject any claims that are "untestable"?

Of course, what else are you going to do with them? You can accept or reject. You'd choose to accept a claim that can't be proven? If so you horrendously misplace the burden of proof. The third option, investigate, is not available for these claims.

Quote:

vishnu wrote:

Fortunately, what I can know, is that nobody else can know about that either. So if anybody comes up to me with a claim about the fundamental truth of the universe, I can safely reject it.

All you are in fact rejecting is empiricism's ability to discover fundamental truth.

More specifically, I don't know whether what I'm discovering via empiricism is fundamental truth or not. What I know is that it works. I don't know that fundamental truth is a thing at all, and if it is a thing, I would have no way of knowing if I was gaining access to it.

people like to believe there is god and his religion. I got to the bottom of my beliefs and the thing is:It depends on what we are exposed to and what all we experience. But then there are these grey areas which makes us believe there is God and our religion is for real and such stuff. If we statistically analysize what everyone has to say about God and stuff, then it couldn't be more clear that this grey area is very big touchy unidentifiable thoughts that humans have had over the ages and the beliefs passed down the generation. People just like to relate what they don't understand to religion/god/miracle

If there is a Supreme Being, the descriptions given by the various religions of the world do not make sense.

eg: When we die, we go to Heaven and spend all eternity singing God's praises. Why does a perfect being need the adulation of who-knows-how-many billions (trillions?) of souls? How can a perfect being have self image issues?

I mean there is being "Religious" and also "religious", big R is where people expect the sun to literally dance on Easter morning, Jesus' face in objects, honestly believe Jesus (or Allah/Yahweh/Buddha) was white and spoke english and then there are those who are spiritual who just happened to be born into their religion.

I don't get the impression the studies in the meta analysis controlled for that.

There's a lot of variation in American Protestantism. Some of it is pretty primitive stuff; the "Big R" as you put it. Some of it is more the little r where people use religion as a means of exploring their spiritual side.

Whether or not you return to your Catholic roots is up to you; you might find the dogma too restrictive for you. It's an individual decision.

I grew up Methodist, but became agnostic in high school. I had a yearning for something spiritual, but I disliked the hell fire and brimstone approach, and preachers who wanted to do my thinking for me. Long story short, the Catholic church ended up being the right place for me . . . but I would definitely be one of those liberal Catholics. I don't check my brain at the door, and I am skeptical of positions that are unjust, poorly argued, or take positions refuted by actual science. Edit: my IQ is 120 . . . but the psychologists who tested me think it is actually higher . . . my scores were brought down by my learning disability.

It works for me. It might not work for you; if it doesn't, then it doesn't make you a bad person.

Edit: my IQ is 120 . . . but the psychologists who tested me think it is actually higher . . . my scores were brought down by my learning disability (my brain scrambles letters and numbers; spelling is a bitch and so is algebra).

Science is not the be all end all of our existence. Science can not tell us the meaning of life, or what truth is and where it comes from and most of all what Love is. Atheist like to say if something can not scientifically proven it must be and be thrown to the scrap heap. Someone please tell me, when was the theory of evolution proven to be fact? Where is the repeatable experiment proving life can all of a sudden exist out of some sludge in a pond? Make no mistake, Atheist life by faith just as much as theist do. It is by faith and faith alone that you don't believe in God. It is by faith you think we came from some cosmic big bang and the conditions were ridiculously just right to form life. I am a Christian, there is so much evidence for Christ one just has to read. Faith is a major part of all life, God designed it that way. By the way, the Christian life is not for the weak of mind or heart. It is VERY difficult to love your enemies and to put God and others before yourself.

Well, for one, you're falling into a very old and very disproven misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is.Theories are never themselves Fact. Theories are supported by facts and evidence and experimentation and observation. A theory is, however, given roughly the same tautological strength as fact when its been around as long as and has as much evidenciary and factual support as Evolution and the Theory of Natural Selection have.

Ann, the Christian faith can be understood by experiencing it. There are plenty of cases where people who have had no religious background at all have come to know and follow Christ very late in their life. Most of those conversions have happened through life experiences. I suggest you read Case for Faith by Lee Strobel.

No, you reject the supernatural because you presume that truth can only be reliably determined via empirical means—observation of natural phenomena. That is, you've eliminated the possibility of the supernatural by your presumption. This is a common fallacy of self-satisfied atheists and pretty much fits the classic definition of hubris.

This is an excellent refutation of a particularly small subset of atheism, known as strong atheism. Unfortunately for you, most atheists are not strong atheists. Weak/agnostic atheism is completely unfazed by the above argument. Weak atheists don't believe they can prove anything, they just appropriately place the burden of proof on the affirmative claim. An agnostic atheist (which again is most atheists) doesn't think she can eliminate the possibility of the supernatural. She rejects the supernatural because it has no foundation. There's an important difference between "I can prove there is no god," which for all intents and purposes is a straw man of an atheist, and "I don't believe in god."

The possible set of untestable claims is infinite. Not just infinite, but for any untestable claim you make, I can make infinitely many others that contradict it. As such when faced with an untestable claim, rejection is the only reasonable response.

Quote:

Empiricism, IMHO, is most healthily viewed through the philosophical lens of the instrumentalist. It has clear and proven utility, but there is no empirical means to affirm that phenomena is an accurate representation of noumena. Neither is there any, reason to believe that all truth can be empirically determined, if at all. In this respect, strict philosophical empiricism fails its own test.

For what it is worth, I am both an instrumentalist and an atheist. I see no incompatibility there. In fact, I arrived at both positions by the same line of reasoning. In brief summary, the reasoning is this: I would like to investigate reality, but not being an arrogant asshole, I don't want to just assume I'm right all the time, so I need a way to check my reasoning against something external. Thus, empiricism.

I make no claims that what I investigate empirically is the fundamental truth of the universe. I accept that I can't know about that. Fortunately, what I can know, is that nobody else can know about that either. So if anybody comes up to me with a claim about the fundamental truth of the universe, I can safely reject it.

That is the essence of atheism. It is true, there are a few atheists who actually are your straw men, but most of us just know what we (and you) don't know, and then appropriately apply the burden of proof, resulting in rejection.

Some people may call the above "agnosticism" rather than atheism, and that's fine too. That's what Bertrand Russell called it. But Russell also observed that if he wanted to convey his meaning to laymen, he would be better suited to call himself an atheist. Since Russell's time, better distinctions have arisen in the philosophy of non-belief. I've little doubt that in today's language, Russell would have chosen weak/agnostic atheism as his label.

A very reasoned response, which I pretty much agree with except for a few points. First, I would argue that the pursuit some types of truth are worthwhile even if they cannot be accessible via empiricism. You may say that these truths are unreliable in the sense that they have "no foundation"--to simplify you can't get a result through a repeatable experiment.

Second, I agree that I have created a straw man that does not resemble you and many others. But, it does resemble many and you can read some of their comments here. What particularly irks me is when people try to use science to refute faith and anyone that doesn't agree with them are ignorant dumb assholes. They take science and turn it into a religion. As an instrumentalist you can surely appreciate that what we do is observe and create models that have explanatory and predictive power. It makes no sense for us to really say whether these models represent reality--at least from an empirical perspective. It is enough that they explain and predict. My favorite example is Sagan's statement at the beginning of Cosmos: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." This is a profoundly unscientific way to start a book or miniseries on science, because it isn't science and he has no empirical proof that this is the case. It is, or was, his belief. Now, of course, we have some scientific models that lead us to believe that this isn't even accurate from a scientific perspective (e.g., M-Theory).

So, while I accept your atheism as a reasoned belief system--even though I don't agree--it is my experience that you are in the minority. Although, I admit I haven't done a study to support that.

No scientific theory is ever more than one confirmed experimental result away from the trash heap of history. On the other hand, religious belief persists despite any number of massive contradictions. Logical empiricism requires the constant and vigorous exercise of analytic intelligence. Religion, not so much...

I agree with your point, but Newton's not really landed on the trash heap despite being technically not correct

Einstein did not disprove Newton. The Newtonian equations are still embedded in Relativity as the special case of low velocity / low mass. Einstein's model also covers cases in which Newton is not applicable.

I'm not particularly religious anymore, but remember quite a bit of scripture from my youth. I would imagine most Christians would answer with this:

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.

If you can't measure it and predict it then it is unreal enough to be irrelevant regardless of how real it is.

The problem with religion is that you never know if yours is any more valid than the next one. You have no real way to evaluate competiting options. At best you have some sort of fascist dictactor threatinging some cruel and unusual punishment for non-compliance.

It really does depend on what you're trying to get out of it.

If you're exploring your own spirituality, then whatever approach works best for you is the one that is most valid. Folks like this can do a lot of good as an expression of that spirituality; they become inspirations for people to better their world views and promote needed social change.

If you're following the herd or trying to control the herd, then any of those same approaches can do a lot of damage. Unfortunately, throughout history, we've had a lot of people like this; the ones who don't ask questions or seek to find their own spiritual path, expecting instead to be led and the ones who want to lead the rest of the group down their own path . . . regardless of what the actual faith really teaches.

Only one kind of "intelligence" is presented. What about social intelligence and the ability to work effectively within a society? Anecdotally, throughout history, many hyper-intelligent people have lacked social skills.

So you want that wiz accountant to do your taxes. I doubt he'd make a good wingman.

In fairness the article does bring up the point about analytical intelligence vs social and other types of intelligence. If someone comes up with a solid definition of those other types of intelligence, and a test that allows them to be measured, it will certainly be interesting to see whether they correlate with religiosity and if so, positively or negatively. For now, idle speculation.

That said, I cannot resist pointing out that the devoutly religious are not very good wingmen either.

My favorite example is Sagan's statement at the beginning of Cosmos: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." This is a profoundly unscientific way to start a book or miniseries on science, because it isn't science and he has no empirical proof that this is the case. It is, or was, his belief.

That the basis for your rejection of a claim is that it is "untestable" belies your insistence that you are not a strict philosophical empiricist. There are plenty of claims that don't lend themselves to empirical analysis (historical events for example) and yet it is not unreasonable to ascribe truthfulness to them based on other methods of analysis.

You are using a silly definition of test. I can test historical claims by comparing them to available evidence. This evidence is often murky though. I'm not a big fan of history because it is highly subjective. There are historical events for which we have physical evidence, and there are wildly differing interpretations of the evidence available.

I'm using the standard definition of testability. Eg see Wikipedia:

Quote:

Testability, a property applying to an empirical hypothesis, involves two components: (1) the logical property that is variously described as contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible, and (2) the practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist.

Quote:

Quote:

vishnu wrote:

I make no claims that what I investigate empirically is the fundamental truth of the universe.

And yet you will a priori reject any claims that are "untestable"?

Of course, what else are you going to do with them? You can accept or reject. You'd choose to accept a claim that can't be proven? If so you horrendously misplace the burden of proof. The third option, investigate, is not available for these claims.

I can't "prove" that Julius Caesar lived, but I have a lot of evidence. So yes I can quite happily accept claims that can't be proven.

Quote:

Quote:

vishnu wrote:

Fortunately, what I can know, is that nobody else can know about that either. So if anybody comes up to me with a claim about the fundamental truth of the universe, I can safely reject it.

All you are in fact rejecting is empiricism's ability to discover fundamental truth.

More specifically, I don't know whether what I'm discovering via empiricism is fundamental truth or not. What I know is that it works. I don't know that fundamental truth is a thing at all, and if it is a thing, I would have no way of knowing if I was gaining access to it.

Certainly no way of knowing if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis.

Off topic but of my favorite quote from Sir Arthur C. Clark is ""One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.""

In my opinion that quote is kind of silly. Without some sort of universal rulebook (set by God or whatever other agency one might choose to accept), morality is nothing more than the arbitrary code of conduct set by the implied consensus of human societies. That is, some specific action (theft for example) is immoral only because it is considered to be so by an implicit consensus judgment of society, which is subject to change, even to the extent of complete reversal, over time.

I'm not claiming that's an insurmountable problem. Far from it, in fact. Most people who have chosen to reject absolute morality (as defined by religion, for example) are aware of, and rationally accept, the conception of morality as temporally and spatially relative. (Interestingly enough, however, the vast majority of people still feel compelled to judge the actions of people in other parts of the world and in history as moral or immoral based on the implicit moral consensus of the culture in which they presently live, as if morality were absolute after all.)

The acceptance of the relativity of morality leads to the conclusion that the consensus of society is superior to the personal convictions of any individual. Otherwise it would be unjust to punish an individual for engaging in acts which the societal consensus considered immoral, but which the individual considered moral. On the other hand, in the case of absolute morality, a moral individual has only to conform to the unalterable law of the external moral authority, while remaining free and independent of the whims of human society.

It is not immediately obvious to me that one should prefer being a slave to the ever-changing consensus of human society over being a slave to a fixed moral authority. (I reject the option of being a slave to nobody and nothing as unrealistic for most people, as we call such persons sociopaths and they end up being punished for their actions in any moral regime).

* There are also extreme atheists, who would actively disbelieve in the spiritual even if confronted with a pure spiritual phenomenon, but since there is no widely verified/documented occurrence of such a phenomenon, they are usually lumped with the other atheists. These extremist atheists, however, tend to be the most vocal, and their opinions do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or world view of all atheists.

Having admitted there's no evidence of a thing ever happening, how in the hell do you claim to know how an "extreme atheist" would react to such a thing?

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

If intelligence only means "thinking only in terms of what one can scientifically measure", that kind of thinking excludes the supernatural, and as such, has no chance of finding it. And if God exists, then for a creature to reject his Creator, it's the ultimate missed opportunity.

To me, intelligence includes the capability to acknowledge someone's own limitations.

Suppose I tell you I have a fire breathing dragon living in my garage and when you ask to see it I show you an apparently empty garage. You ask where this fire breathing dragon is and I tell you he is invisible. So, seeing dust on the floor and no footprints, you ask why there are no foot prints and I tell you the invisible fire breathing dragon doesn't walk, he floats around. So you wander around my garage, testing the temperature and finding no particular sources of heat say that you can't find any evidence of fire and I tell you this is an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon. You then ask what is the difference between an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon and no dragon at all and I have no answer other than I know the dragon is there. Why should you believe in my invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon?

Atheists, for the most part, don't reject the supernatural without considering it, we reject it because there is no discernible difference between there being a supernatural as claimed by believers and there being no supernatural at all.

No, you reject the supernatural because you presume that truth can only be reliably determined via empirical means—observation of natural phenomena. That is, you've eliminated the possibility of the supernatural by your presumption. This is a common fallacy of self-satisfied atheists and pretty much fits the classic definition of hubris.

Empiricism, IMHO, is most healthily viewed through the philosophical lens of the instrumentalist. It has clear and proven utility, but there is no empirical means to affirm that phenomena is an accurate representation of noumena. Neither is there any, reason to believe that all truth can be empirically determined, if at all. In this respect, strict philosophical empiricism fails its own test.

Two observations

1) Really a poor article. The only quantitative presentation in the article is from a 2009 study which can be sliced and diced a number of ways. For example, the highest IQ country has a relatively low percentage of atheists: about 12%. Of those countries with average IQ's above 100 eight have less than 50% atheists (many significantly lower than 50%) and one above 50%. Admittedly there is a grouping of effectively 0% atheists with IQs significantly lower than 100 (ridiculously lower). All this makes me suspicious that these studies and meta-analysis have not corrected for other factors. Certainly, the article gives me no confidence that they have.

2) If similar studies had been performed 500, or even 100, years ago I have little doubt the results would be significantly different, as a much higher percentage of the educated class were trained as clergy, at least in the west. Intellectual thought goes through fads. That's for certain.

One other thing is for certain: studies like these will increase the self-satisfaction of the already self-satisfied and make them even less likely to critically examine their belief systems—a sort of mental and emotional masturbation, really.

RE precursor paragraphs:While it is true that on a basis of strictest philosophical terms empiricism fails at the most basic level, that of perception. I'm not talking about perception based on what our senses tell us, but what our minds tell us that our senses tell us.

I cannot empirically prove that what I am seeing, hearing, tasting and feeling are actually there and that I'm not simply a brain in a jar receiving input from a mad scientist trying to simulate the real world. Or that I have a body at all. Or that what I am seeing has ANY basis whatsoever in reality.

I can prove to myself that I exist simply by the act of wondering if I do. If I did not exist, I could not question my existence. Beyond that, I can prove nothing by philosophical means. And neither can you. You can no more prove that God is real than I can prove the FSM is real. I can no more prove YOU are real than you can prove I am real.

That gets us no-where and leaves us in the rather tawdry and boring realm of the nihilist, whom believes that nothing exists but himself. Are you a nihilist? Your wording suggests you are not. Typically nihilists (in my experience) tend not to debate, as its pointless to them.

So, in the interest of getting somewhere, we have come up with empirical tests that we can all agree match what we each observe for reality. We come up with logical theorems that describe the motions of the planets and stars, theorems for why animals appear as they do, for why there is air and light and everything else observable in the observable universe. We then design tests to test whether or not these theorems match with what we observe.

If they do not match, we either throw out or rethink the theorem and perform another experiment. We peer review these results to make sure that our results match what others observe through the same experiment and then, if the results match, we publish and the theorem becomes established theory backed by observable, testable fact.

We reject supernatural explanations for things because they are not testable and we cannot prove to ourselves or others that they do, in fact, have a logical, factual basis.

RE: observation 1

The article does include a few caveats at the end that do point out some of the fallacies of this article and some of the problems associated with the study (IE, analytical IQ only, only studies in English, only countries not predominately Atheist already.)

RE: observation 2Duh. The world changes, demographics change, social mores change, ideologies change, educational policies and tools change. Conduct the same study a hundred years from now and an entirely different result will emerge. Expecting the results to stay the same throughout time is ludicrous at best.

"We reject supernatural explanations for things because they are not testable and we cannot prove to ourselves or others that they do, in fact, have a logical, factual basis." Yes, I understand. Anything is that is not empirically testable is uninteresting or irrelevant to you. But, that's your judgment. Not everyone has that same viewpoint, and it is a viewpoint. And most religious people are not nihilists. They associate with other people with similar religious beliefs and if they're wise they follow the advice of Locke.

And, of course, many of us (I hope) have read Descarte--so these ideas are not new. BTW, I'm not a big fan of Descartes approach, but it was an interesting effort just to see how far he could take things.

I understand what theory and scientific facts are Mephox. Like you said theories are supported by fact. All I'm asking is, where is the fact proving that life started by overcoming unbelievable odds of cells coming together to start life in a pond millions of years ago? The theory says it can happen, but there is no scientific proof to prove that it did happen. You can't have it both ways, if you are going to live by the scientific method then you have to stay in that world. I want to see the scientifically repeatable test that proves life can start by happenchance, otherwise your premise is based on faith and nothing more.

there is no need to assign meaning for everything. There is no meaning for life other than to just live it(in a good way).

life didn't suddenly came into exist out of a pond or anywhere. Science has never said so. Its religion that says we came to exist one fine morning! It took millions of years to form what we see around today. Evidence is what we get sometimes when we dig up earth for something and then we find the remains of some kinda wierd creatures that once existed. Worst mind virus is to think why we exist and waste our time and energy on that thoughts wasting our time finite to live

If there is a Supreme Being, the descriptions given by the various religions of the world do not make sense.

eg: When we die, we go to Heaven and spend all eternity singing God's praises. Why does a perfect being need the adulation of who-knows-how-many billions (trillions?) of souls? How can a perfect being have self image issues?

Even asking that question shows you don't understand religiosity. I'll give you a hint... logic is irrelevant... or, often times, even purposefully to be avoided.

you might also find a negative correlation between IQ tests and creative geniuses, writers, poets, musicians, and a whole universes of people who dont agree that circle, square, triangle, circle is equivalent to 1,4,3,1 instead of 0,1,2,10.

IQ tests are, in a word, fucking uselss bullshit.

(hint, the second sequence is trinary. shove that in your statistical correlator).

Many studies have also examined the brain in real time and have revealed that religion fires the same areas as opiates. Marx was correct in his analysis a century before technology validated him. His judgement was based on the behavior of the religious. That being said, religion is man-made obviously because god hates all the same people his followers do. Spirituality, a possible communion with each other and with a higher power or powers that may also have been the creators of our known universe, is and should remain a very personal thing.

You've managed to completely mangle what has actually been learned about what parts of the brain are affected by religion. All we know is there are differences between the brains of atheists and religious people (based on scans). We don't know why, or if belief systems cause the differences or are caused by the differences.

I can't "prove" that Julius Caesar lived, but I have a lot of evidence. So yes I can quite happily accept claims that can't be proven....Certainly no way of knowing if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis.

What? You said earlier in that post that you have a lot of evidence that Caesar existed, so you have no trouble believing something that can't be proven... then you spout this little gem. What, exactly do you think Empirical Analysis means?

In short, Empirical Analysis is the analysis of evidence - either emperical or otherwise, to test a theory. You accept Caesar based on evidence, have examined it and accepted it by means of an emperical analysis. You don't just believe that Caesar exists regardless of what the evidence states, you believe it because of the evidence. You, sir, are an Empiricist by your own words.

I don't know whether what I'm discovering via empiricism is fundamental truth or not. What I know is that it works. I don't know that fundamental truth is a thing at all, and if it is a thing, I would have no way of knowing if I was gaining access to it.

Access to truth can be tested as follows: use the consistency property of truth. Nothing that is true can be inconsistent with anything else that is true. Compare every incoming assertion with everything else that you have already accepted as true (all of which must have already been checked for consistency) prior to accepting it. If it contradicts something you have already accepted as true, then investigate to decide whether the incoming assertion is really untrue or the previously accepted things are really untrue. Experiments and the gathering of additional observations are helpful during this process. Ultimately, that which is deemed false is either rejected during the intake process or pruned away from the existing collection in order to allow the new assertion to enter. The current collection of mutually consistent, accepted assertions constitutes your understanding of "truth" at any given time.

Actually Ann, our life is shaped by why we think we are here. It defines our actions. In the Atheist world life has no meaning we're just here to live and it's the survival of the fittest. So, taking that out, people like Hitler and Stalin to name just two were just living that life out to the fullest. In the Atheist world, what makes what they did so wrong?

I understand what theory and scientific facts are Mephox. Like you said theories are supported by fact. All I'm asking is, where is the fact proving that life started by overcoming unbelievable odds of cells coming together to start life in a pond millions of years ago? The theory says it can happen, but there is no scientific proof to prove that it did happen. You can't have it both ways, if you are going to live by the scientific method then you have to stay in that world. I want to see the scientifically repeatable test that proves life can start by happenchance, otherwise your premise is based on faith and nothing more.

We can manufacture DNA strands and proteins under lab conditions. In fact this has been done for decades. And scientists have succeeded in creating self-replicating bacteria from synthetic genes. So yes, we have repeatedly created life.

Actually Ann, our life is shaped by why we think we are here. It defines our actions. In the Atheist world life has no meaning we're just here to live and it's the survival of the fittest. So, taking that out, people like Hitler and Stalin to name just two were just living that life out to the fullest. In the Atheist world, what makes what they did so wrong?

Hell no. My life is shaped by my desires to eat, drink, sleep, mate with the best of the other sex and have power over others. Some have different priorities, but modern culture and society is very much a game where the fittest survive.

Hitler and Stalin kill people. A mutual agreement that people could kill others without consequences is not beneficial to society. Therefore people who kill people are imprisoned or executed. You are trying to use the word "wrong" to define individuals, all the while not realizing that "wrong" itself is a definition that varies hugely from person to person.

First, I would argue that the pursuit some types of truth are worthwhile even if they cannot be accessible via empiricism. You may say that these truths are unreliable in the sense that they have "no foundation"--to simplify you can't get a result through a repeatable experiment.

Explain to me how you do get a result then, and more importantly how you assess the reliability of that result.

Quote:

As an instrumentalist you can surely appreciate that what we do is observe and create models that have explanatory and predictive power. It makes no sense for us to really say whether these models represent reality--at least from an empirical perspective. It is enough that they explain and predict.

I do, and it is enough. IMHO it is an act of bravery to accept that there are things you cannot know. Answers are comforting, and I have no trouble at all understanding why people grasp for easy ones in religion, but I can't do that. An answer that is in all probability wrong (though I cannot prove it) is of no use to me. It gives me no comfort, and no greater understanding.

Quote:

My favorite example is Sagan's statement at the beginning of Cosmos: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." This is a profoundly unscientific way to start a book or miniseries on science, because it isn't science and he has no empirical proof that this is the case. It is, or was, his belief.

If you've read much of Sagan's writings, I think you'd find that it is more likely poetic license than his belief. Cosmos is beautifully targeted at the lay person, because it doesn't get bogged down by stuff like this. I highly recommend The Demon-Haunted World, in which Sagan very eloquently explains the ways in which we can assess the credibility of knowledge.

Quote:

So, while I accept your atheism as a reasoned belief system--even though I don't agree--it is my experience that you are in the minority. Although, I admit I haven't done a study to support that.

I've looked for demographic studies breaking non-believers down by the various types of non-belief. Unfortunately, invariable the finest gradations they use are "agnostic" "atheist" "spiritual" and the like, which makes them useless for this purpose.

My guess that most atheists are not strong atheists is based purely on:1) Atheist literature2) Conversations with atheists

This is not strong evidence, I admit, but it is the best available, to my knowledge. I wouldn't stake anything I cared to lose on the claim.

In my experience some of them are just mentally lazy. Others see it as a path that won't upset anyone and will help get what they want. Some have personality disorders and feel they can't get by without religion. Many have an amazing ability to ignore facts which contradict what they have already decided to believe. Many have not figured out that religious feelings are an evolutionarily derived property universal to human beings and have no relation to a specific dogma which is presented.

Then again... some of them are just not very smart.

Sorry for the flamish nature of the post. This is just what I have observed.

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

Even as much as you are getting down-voted, what you said here specifically makes sense. As someone who stopped being religious myself, I'm aware that being atheist requires one to make a rather large assumption as well. The assumption is of course that a deity does not exist. Believing in a very specific religious dogma is of course a much bigger list of assumptions than atheism makes, so of course it seems illogical to many atheists to even consider an alternative.

However, there is another option: plain old theism. It's the true opposite to atheism. Basically, you believe there are one or more deities, but beyond that plain old theists try to assume very little about said deity/deities. It's really no larger of an assumption than that a god doesn't exist. Theism and atheism take you down two very different philosophical paths. It would be no less than unwise to not attempt to fully explore both.

Which brings up a very important point. Personal faith is all fine and good. But you can't even legally sell willow bark (which contains aspirin) and claim it cures headaches. And you can legally claim to have cured people of AIDS by waving your hands over them and ask people to send you money?

I think some of the abuses of religion should be curtailed by law. Amassing wealth beyond simple operating expenses being number one.

You're going to run into some major Constitutional issues there, at least here in the US. Scientology managed to go from scam to religion simply by claiming to be a church.

It's disgusting that someone could claim to cure AIDS that way; I don't know if the Constitution would allow legislation to challenge such claims by forcing the "cured" to produce a blood sample.

Basically, people have a right to be scammed. But not all churches accept these kinds of claims at face value; the Vatican at least makes attempts to eliminate natural causes of claimed miracles or claimed demonic possession, recognizing that many natural events can be mistaken for the supernatural.

People have to ask hard questions of their faith. Unfortunately, many people are not willing to do this, and so they leave themselves vulnerable.

I make no claims that what I investigate empirically is the fundamental truth of the universe.

And yet you will a priori reject any claims that are "untestable"?

Of course, what else are you going to do with them? You can accept or reject. You'd choose to accept a claim that can't be proven? If so you horrendously misplace the burden of proof. The third option, investigate, is not available for these claims.

I can't "prove" that Julius Caesar lived, but I have a lot of evidence. So yes I can quite happily accept claims that can't be proven.

Do you see the word proven anywhere in my post? I don't. I can't prove the sun will rise tomorrow, but I have sufficient evidence that I'm willing to believe it will.

Quote:

vishnu wrote:

More specifically, I don't know whether what I'm discovering via empiricism is fundamental truth or not. What I know is that it works. I don't know that fundamental truth is a thing at all, and if it is a thing, I would have no way of knowing if I was gaining access to it.

Certainly no way of knowing if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis.

Explain to me what method of analysis I should be using. Please take extra care in explaining the ways in which I can determine the reliability of my analysis.